


Shaking the Polaroid

by Peril_in_Peace



Series: The More Things Change [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Dealing with Stuff Takes a While, F/M, Family Feels, Gen, Post-GOTG2, Post-Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 19:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11320350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peril_in_Peace/pseuds/Peril_in_Peace
Summary: Peter sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor. He looked more… human than she thought she’d ever remembered seeing him, in a pair of dark plaid flannel pants and a faded t-shirt commending the “Chicago Bears” for their 1986 “Super Bowl” victory. A small stack of photographs banded together was next to his knee and some bare toes. A single picture was in his hand.





	Shaking the Polaroid

“What’s he like?” Peter’s grandfather asked her. They were sitting on the front porch of the old home. The sky was clear, and the stars shone surprisingly brightly in the night sky, despite their proximity to the light pollution of the nearby town. Gamora forgot the name of it. Didn’t really matter anyway

“He’s an… honorable man.” That's the answer she settles on, and she surprised herself, how satisfied she was with it. It seemed to satisfy him, too, for now. It made her a little sad, though. That he had to ask her the question at all.

It was obvious to her that he was more curious. Peter was still upstairs going through boxes of his mother's old things. Every once in awhile, they'd hear a crash or a swear as he pulled something heavy from a high shelf. It was late, but he was undeterred, even as his dinner still sat cold and forgotten on the kitchen table.

But the elder Quill seemed to instinctively know what questions to ask and which to leave, which answers to press for and which to just make peace with not quite understanding. She liked him.

“Lost my father in the second World War,” he said. “I'm sure that, historically, that don't mean anything to you, but the point is, I lost my pops. Grew up without a dad. Went off to fight in Vietnam myself. Missed some’a her smallest years, but I came home to be a father to Meredith. We were lucky. I watched a whole buncha kids her age grow up without… so when Mer got… well, when she ended up… in a way… with no husband, no father for that boy… I thought I had to step in. Be the man in his life. Show him how to be, right?”

Gamora nodded slightly.

“Meredith… boy, that girl never fought with me more, even as a teenager. She told me every day, I was bein’ too hard on her boy. Just let him be a kid, pops. He's just a kid… but I kept fighting back. Wanted Peter to grow up right. I think I didn't trust her-- she was young and stupid and on her own and dammit if I knew better.

“But when she got sick… I wanted to take it all back. I blamed myself. I thought I could do better, and here I was--gonna get the chance to prove it, 'cause here she is dyin’ and leavin’ him with me to raise.

"And I promised myself that I would change. After she was gone. That I'd do better to raise him the way she'd want. But I never… well, you know.”

Despite herself, Gamora chuckled just a bit at a stray thought. “I think you and Yondu could have gotten along.”

She was happy to see Mr. Quill smile a bit. Peter had guardedly told him about Yondu, leaving out most of the more horrible stuff. “Maybe,” he huffed.

...Though there might still be some lingering resentment about the whole abduction thing.

“Taught him how to fight? That Yondu?”

She nodded. “And how to fly.”

“Used to wonder what he woulda become, growing up here, normal life. He used to say he wanted to do _fun_ things… ‘fly fighters like you did, Pops’ or be an astronaut or some such nonsense. Kids, you know… don’t really get it. Here… he and his ma… two spirits, free as you please. Wondered if he ever woulda been able to settle himself to doing the kinds of things almost everybody _actually_ ends up having to do to get by. I mean, could you imagine him working in an office somewhere? Bagging groceries? Driving a truck? Even the military… wanna fly a fighter son? Gotta take orders, study hard and pay your dues.” He shook his head.

Gamora didn’t really have much of a frame of reference for any of those things, so she simply stayed quiet.   

“What is he looking for up there?” Pops asked. His curiosity finally getting the better of him.

“I’m not sure. I think…” Gamora considered, “He’ll know when he finds it.”

There was a moment of silence, Pops still clearly thinking things through.

“‘Cause ‘a that dumb movie?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Still don't understand what _Big Trouble in Little China_ has to do with anything,” he mumbled and opened another beer. Gamora took a sip of hers, then leaned back on her elbows, looking up at Earth’s single plain white moon.

It was the voice that did it. The television was on low in the living room when they’d sat down for dinner, smiling and talking. They’d both heard the raised voice on the air and tensed, suddenly oblivious to the normalcy of Peter’s grandfather telling about how the basement had flooded two springs ago. The voice had become an angry shout and for a split second, Peter and Gamora looked at each other across the table in a wide-eyed mix of panic and preparation, both semi-consciously curling their fingers tightly around their forks.

Then Peter tilted his head and squinted, pushing back in his chair and marching into the next room, stopping short when he saw the screen. Gamora rushed in after him, still wielding her flatware. He gave a short, mirthless laugh, shaking his head at the image of a horde of otherworldly martial artists and a guy with thick curly hair and a tank top who… looked a lot like… she squinted and approached the screen, then the character spoke again, and she actually jumped. There was a wry sort of accent, but that _voice_ …

“Hey, I remember this one. Silly as all hell, but your ma took you to see it a couple times… you probably don’t remember. She really liked that Kurt Russell…” Mr. Quill cautiously came into the room. “Might even still have the tape boxed up with the old Betamax…” he continued.

This wasn’t the first time he had reacted strangely to something in the last few days and she knew Pops was trying to connect with Peter, draw him closer with a childhood memory. He’d had glimmers of success before… but of course this time it wouldn’t work.

The screen went black and Gamora had turned around to see Peter holding the remote. “Who is Ku--” she started. He stepped back, and just shook his head quickly, handing her the remote and turning toward the kitchen with a wave. “Wait. Peter--”

“I’m goin’ for a walk.” He slipped his feet into a pair of unlaced sneakers by the kitchen door and threw on his old red leather jacket over his t-shirt.

“Do you have your--”

Without looking back, he held up one of the phones that Stark’s people had given them and pushed the screen door open with his shoulder, leaving her with his very confused grandfather looking to her for some kind of explanation. She felt bad that she didn’t have one… not one she thought she had a right to give.

Gamora and Peter’s ‘Pops’ (he _insisted_ she act like family and address him _proper_ ) had silently finished eating and cleared dinner, leaving Peter’s plate wrapped in plastic.

“Should we be worried?” Pops finally asked her, uncapping a beer bottle with a pop on the edge of the kitchen counter, then handing it to her. She shook her head and looked idly out the open kitchen window.

“No.”

“Guess you’d know. Better than me…” he said softly. He pitched the two bent bottle caps into the trash can and made his way outside through the squeaky screen door. He sat heavily in the worn ‘Adirondack’ style chair--he’d told her with pride that he’d made it himself and made her ‘try it out’ their first night--and looked out at the large grassy yard and quiet road.

And she wondered how many times he’d sat just like that, waiting for Peter to come home.

When he’d finally walked back up the driveway two hours later, head down and hands stuffed in his pockets, Gamora had been about ready to call him. It made her uneasy, being on this unfamiliar planet with little more than the clothes on their backs. She felt naked without her blades and knew Peter felt the same without his pistols, but that was the deal. Things just weren’t done that way, here.

Peter had tried to make her feel better by saying she was lethal enough without any weapon at all. And he was right… but it didn’t _really_ make her feel much better.

“Well, it makes _me_ feel better,” he had said. Bless him for making her laugh a little.

He stopped at the bottom of the porch stairs and leaned against the railing, turning out toward the yard and looking up at the stars for a minute before wordlessly striding into the house.

 

* * *

 

The silence spurred her to action. The banging and swearing had eventually, noticeably stopped and, like when Groot had been small, the silence was concerning. Gamora set her beer down on the peeling wooden floor of the porch and crept into the house and up the stairs. There were creaks a few steps behind her, as Pops followed.

“Peter?” She poked her head around the corner of the hallway into the bedroom at the top of the stairs. The door was open, so she knocked lightly on the doorframe before she fully saw into the room.

It was the “guest” bedroom, Pops had said. Peter said it used to be his room a long time ago, but it didn’t bother him that it wasn’t anymore. It had a single bed along one wall, with a mattress that rolled out from underneath. A chair and a lamp in the corner. A desk. Any personality it had before had been stored away in boxes in the closet.

And it seemed like everything in those boxes was now scattered on the floor, on the bed, on the desk… Peter sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor. He looked more… human than she thought she’d ever remembered seeing him, in a pair of dark plaid flannel pants and a faded t-shirt commending the “Chicago Bears” for their 1986 “Super Bowl” victory. A small stack of photographs banded together was next to his knee and some bare toes. A single picture was in his hand.

Gamora pursed her lips. He’d apparently found what he was looking for.  

Pops came up behind her, and she turned a bit and shook her head at him before sneaking into the room. She crouched next to Peter and frowned at the picture. It was old and yellowed, the figure was much younger--different hair, clean shaven--but unmistakeable. The woman with him was young and smiling and had Peter’s eyes. On the white strip below the square image, was written “Me + Jason at Naggy’s, New Year’s 1980.”

“He tried _so hard_ to find the form that best suited her…” Peter said softly, his voice mocking and full of contempt. “She was _nineteen_ and had a crush on Kurt _fucking_ Russell… he just fuckin’… _reeled her in_...”

He shook his head and Gamora remembered his angry, disjointed flurry of an explanation for why he dropped his picture of David Hasselhoff into the campfire when they’d gone back to Berhert for the _Milano_.

“Goddammit... I _hate_ that he ever touched her,” he growled, his fingers tightening on the bottom of the picture, crumpling it at the corner.  

Gamora gently took the picture from his hand and set it down. He looked at her, and she’d half expected to see his face red and eyes watering, but she knew he’d gotten far past that point a long time ago.

It’d been nearly four years since they’d killed his father, and what Peter had eventually emerged with was an almost eerie zen of purpose. Peter was a man who liked to deal in absolutes, and at the very least, his father had given him that gift: the absolute certainty that Ego was an evil dick… and that Peter rejected everything about him with _literally_ every fiber of his being. In the end, Peter had embraced that simple truth and carved it into his identity with an odd sense of peace and twisted gratitude that at least he didn’t have to _wonder_ anymore.

She quirked an eyebrow. “You want to kill him again?”

Gamora could tell he was trying to fight it, but a little smile reached his eye, and his lip curled just a bit. “You know me so well.”

He sighed and looked up at the doorway as she plopped fully to the floor next to him. “Pops?”

“Yeah, Pete?” the older man moved into the room and pulled out the chair from the desk. Peter handed him the picture.

“I know it was a long time ago… but… do you remember ever meeting this guy?”

Mr. Quill examined the image for a moment, sitting back and holding it with both hands. “Yeah, actually. Your Ma didn’t bring many guys home… but she did bring him by for dinner once. I remember I didn’t like him.”

Gamora smirked. Peter raised an eyebrow, but rather uncharacteristically responded only with, “Why?”

“He rubbed me wrong. Too old for her, smarmy type… too much of a charmer. And the hair. Would you believe the guy said he was in the Navy? I told him, ‘Son, I was a Navy pilot for 15 years… and I get that times change, but you will _never_ make be believe you’ve been servin’ on ship or shore with hair like _that_.” Peter snorted and Pops shook his head, handing the picture back.

“Anyway, I think she still saw him a couple times after that, but boy, I sure pissed him off. He was tryin’ his damndest not to haul off and clock me, but I could tell, he wanted to. He was not used to being called on his shit. Mer never brought him around again. She said he ‘shipped off’ at some point… knew it was a crock a’ bull, though…”

Peter smiled and nodded down at the picture. “You got good instincts, Pop. Better than mine.”

“Why? Who is he?”

“That was him, Pops. Mom’s ‘spaceman.”

“Huh. Knew he was fulla shit,” Mr. Quill replied, utterly nonplused.

Peter blinked. Then looked up at his grandfather with a real grin. And Gamora realized that she was seeing genuine affection for the first time since they’d arrived. Like Peter’s lost connection to this person had _finally_ clicked back into place.

“Yeah, completely full of shit,” he nodded, and stretched his legs out in front of him.

“So… you met him then.” Pops looked over his glasses at Peter, his eyes darting to Gamora for a split second as if to ask permission… see if he was pushing too far. Gamora just smiled and leaned back on the bedpost.

And it struck her. They had suddenly become comrades, united by a common enemy.

Peter nodded. “After a fortunately long delay... yes. Yes, I did.”

“Asshole?” Pops gave him a surprisingly youthful, mischievous grin that warmed Gamora. It was so much like Peter’s.

“Oh, you have no idea. And arrogant as shit.”

“Yup. Hell of a chip. I do recall.

“That’s not the half of it. Jason? Not really his name.”

“What then?”

“Ego. Literally. Literally, he called himself ‘Ego.”

Pops laughed so hard he had to wipe a little tear from his eye.

“And the Navy thing? Remember that song, ‘Brandy,’ by _Looking Glass_?” Peter offered.

“Yeah, think so…”

“This is gonna totally ruin it for you forever…”

Gamora grabbed Peter’s shoulder as leverage to pull herself up. He stopped talking just long enough to look at her with a _don’t go_ brow-furrow. She smiled and squeezed a _you’ll be fine_ into his shoulder as she got up and winked at Pops.

“I’m gonna go make our check-in’s,” she said quietly, and walked softly out into the hall. She leaned against the wall and listened for a minute. Of course Peter wouldn’t go into all the painful details--he spun a war story for his grandfather. A tale of how their shared foe was vanquished.

Pops didn’t need to know about things like the cave of bones and the galaxy of women and children before Meredith and Peter. He didn’t need to know the depths of Ego’s cruelty and manipulation… everything he did to Peter and how long and hard it was for him to _really_ come back from it. He didn’t need to know how _really_ close they came to being killed, how _guilty_ Peter felt about what Ego did to so many worlds using his power, or how desperately Peter had clung to Yondu’s frozen corpse.

He didn’t need to know that Ego had put the tumor in Meredith’s head.

Pops didn’t need to hear an earful of _truth_ and be forced to look back on a single moment in his life some 40 years ago and wonder forever what he could have done differently to make sure his daughter had never seen that man again… even if it meant Peter would never exist.

That wasn’t the point. The _past_ wasn’t the point of any of this. Peter was never going to be un-abducted. Pops would never have his eight-year-old grandson again. Or another chance to raise him. But maybe they could be two men building new things in common, starting with this one spark.

She imagined the version of Ego from the photograph; who made himself look like Kurt Russell to court Meredith Quill and told lies and flung attitude at her father, who didn’t like him. Gamora wondered what Ego would think about their mutual disdain for him being that vital common ground for Peter and his grandfather. She smiled brightly. She was sure the idea would _haunt_ him.

Gamora went downstairs, leaving them alone together for the first time in these last three days and opened up the computer to call the _Quadrant_ up in low orbit. Kraglin answered.

Repairs were going well. Yes, Rocket had everything he needed. No, Groot, Drax and Mantis weren’t getting into any trouble in New York. Yes, Nebula was fine…

“Wait, Nebula is back? I thought she went with the Vision to… meditate or reflect or…” The battle with Thanos and its aftermath had been difficult for her and the former bearer of the Mind Stone had been able to help her work through some of her… issues.

“No, she’s here. Came up in a Quinjet yesterday.”

Gamora heard stirs from upstairs, then the creak of the top stairs.

“Thanks, Kraglin. We’ll check in again tomorrow.”

She closed the laptop and looked over her shoulder to see Peter yawning, leaning against the frame of the living room’s entryway.

“Pops go to bed?” She asked. He nodded and plopped on the couch.

“Are you okay?”

He looked at her for a second, took a deep breath, in and out. “Yeah.”

“How much did you tell him?”

Peter smiled and shrugged. “Dunno. The highlights.”

“I see.”

She padded over the few steps to the couch and sat beside him, curling her feet up under her and lazily resting her head on his shoulder.

“Thanks for coming here with me,” he said. “It helped.”

“You’re welcome.”

“But, you should go,” he said slowly, with a hint of caution. “Be with your sister.”

“Nebula can take--”

“It’s not about Nebula.”

He took her hand and tilted his head in closer to hers. “You always accuse me of being a selfless fool, Gamora. But take a look at yourself.” Gamora unconsciously, inexplicably tightened her grip on his hand. “Thanos is gone,” he continued softly. “He’s gone. And you’re sitting on a couch with me in Nowhere, Missouri.”

“What’s so wrong with that?” she asked, absolutely sincere.

He sighed. “Even Nebula needed to… process. Ego happened years ago, and I’m _still_ a little hinky. Obviously. C’mon, Gamora. Even you can’t be that perfect. I’m glad you’re here… I really, _really_ am. But, you gotta deal… and all my shit is just a distraction.”

Was he right? She knew he was… but wasn’t that _why_ she came? For the distraction? She didn’t _want_ to _deal_. Not yet.

“Does it make me a coward to prefer the distraction… for the moment?”

“Of course not.”

They sat in silence, both half falling asleep. He seemed to be letting it go for now, and Gamora was grateful.

“Did you tell him Yondu taught me to fly?”

“Yes--was that alright?” she said, a little worriedly.

“Well, yeah. Not like it was a secret. But… he wants to teach me something.”

That piqued her curiosity. “What could he possibly--”

She looked up at his face, and he was smiling to himself.

“I never got to learn how to drive a car.”

Gamora made a face. “One of those loud dirty things with wheels stuck on roads?”

He held up a finger. “You miss the point. The noise and the wheels are the best part.”

Despite her absolute confusion with the whole concept--Peter could fly anything with thrusters and a stick, so driving a primitive ground-based conveyance seemed totally pointless--she smiled.

“I think you will both enjoy driving.”

“Yeah…” he sighed. “Hey--did you know? Cars _talk_ now…”

**Author's Note:**

> I have seen Ego use "Jason" as his human identity in other fics, and it made a lot of sense that Meredith would make that Peter's middle name after his dad, so I went with it too. Also could not get the idea of Ego changing forms to best manipulate his "marks" out of my head--so that's where this came from. I have not written a fic for anything in over 10 years... rusty as shit. But this was cheaper than seeing GOTG 2 for a sixth time. And I hope it was enjoyed. Thank you for reading. :)


End file.
